The present embodiments relate to modeling of anatomy, such as the mitral valve. Medical imaging data is used to create patient-specific modeling.
Medical imaging techniques provide powerful tools to visualize valvular structures. Echocardiography (e.g., 4D Transesophageal Echocardiography (TEE)) is used in many clinical applications because of high temporal resolution, ease of use, and relatively low cost. Advancements in imaging techniques may allow for quantitative evaluation of the mitral valve structure to aid predictive surgical planning.
Several approaches have been proposed to model mitral valve geometry and dynamics, including morphological and biomechanical models. The morphological models employ an automatic or semi-automatic method to detect the mitral apparatus and track motion from medical images. These models provide visualization and quantitative measurements of the anatomical structure, but do not provide the underlying mechanisms of the motion pattern or pathological changes.
Several patient-specific biomechanical models, including structural models and fluid-structure interaction models, have been proposed using geometric information from medical images and general (e.g., population based) material parameters of the mitral leaflet tissues from experimental results. Mechanical models describing the mechanism of mitral valve dynamics may be useful to predict how the pathological dynamics can be modified by medical intervention. Such models have the potential to become efficient predictive tools to design preoperative treatment plans in selecting the patients and determining clipping sites to ensure the optimal outcome. However, the use of general material parameters limits the representation for specific patients, resulting in the model being of less use for diagnosis and surgical planning for a given patient.
The patient-specific biomechanical models may model structure not easily identified from medical imaging. For example, chordae are modeled as springs or connectors between leaflets and papillary tips. Attempting to model complex chordae structure with the simple connectors or springs may result in artifacts.